Free Crazed: A Blood Money Novel by Edie Harris Page B

pore, she came, tears trickling from the corners of her eyes, and she scrabbled to hold him to her, take him into her body as deeply and unalterably as possible. “Marido,” she gasped through her sobs, losing her grasp on words, thoughts, everything but the angry emotions rioting in her chest. “Marido, te amo.”
    He kissed the tears from her cheeks and jumped over the edge with her, his semen scalding her. It was enough to wake Ilda from her daze, so that when he shifted to lie beside her on the bed, she was already blinking through the aftershocks of a pleasure so inescapably real. His fingers curled around her wrist, slowly, tugging her to his side, but she resisted. Stiffening went against every impulse, every instinct. Her body screamed at her to go where he led her and cuddle against him. In the past, she would have. In the past, she wouldn’t have let him roll off of her in the first place.
    Aware that he permitted her to do so, when his greater strength could have pinned her down, Ilda wrenched herself away and off the bed. Silently, her breathing hectic, she scurried around the hotel room, yanking on her clothing as she found it. The missing buttons on her blouse forced her to knot the tails of her shirt over her belly, but when she turned to face the bed—and the naked, virile man sprawled across it—she felt far more in control. “I can’t help you, Casey Faraday.” The risks were too great, not only to her person but to the life she led in this city where she’d spent thirty-one years under the protection of the Marin cartel. That protection could disappear in an instant, and would the second Pipe learned she was an informant for a joint DEA-Interpol task force. “And you need to leave Medellín.” Saying that hurt , like losing him all over again.
    “I can’t leave.” He pushed up onto one elbow, eyes heavy-lidded as he watched her, but she didn’t mistake his sated, slumberous gaze for relaxation. No, he saw her—maybe even saw through her. “The hostage...he’s my brother. His name is Adam.”
    Unwillingly, Théa’s smiling face darted through her mind, a happy memory from the night of the rehearsal dinner before her intended marriage to Pipe. Beautiful Théa, whose time on this earth had ended after only twenty-nine short years. “You’re telling me Pipe is holding your brother captive.”
    “Yeah.”
    Her voice lowered, and she crossed her arms protectively over her chest where the torn material of her blouse gaped. “He must know who you are, then.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “But you don’t know.”
    He hesitated. “No.”
    “Do you understand how dangerous this is?” Realizing her hair was a mess, she combed harried fingers through the curls and quickly braided the mass of it again. Scanning the floor, she searched for the missing hair elastic, glancing up only when Casey cleared his throat. There, dangling from one finger, was the elastic, and she snatched it with a frown. “Do you know what you’re asking me to do?”
    “I know, and I wish to God it wasn’t you I had to ask this of.” Sitting fully upright in the bed, he scrubbed one hand over his buzzed scalp, and it was only then that she noticed the utter exhaustion—that had nothing to do with sex—lurking in the lines of his face and body. “But I need a meet-cute with Pipe, and I can’t just show up like I’m looking for him. He has to think he stumbled upon me himself.”
    Irritation flashed. “And once he stumbles upon you, what do you think he’s going to do, hmm? Just...welcome you back with open arms?”
    Casey met her gaze directly. “No, he’ll probably beat the shit out of me.”
    “Pipe doesn’t beat people.”
    “No,” he agreed through clenched teeth. “He has thugs for that.”
    “You were one of those thugs, once upon a time.” And a spy. She couldn’t afford to forget this fact. Against all better judgment, and before she could second-guess herself, she followed her handler’s